Kieran Shannon: The Mac and Jack show: the first all-returning All-Ireland
RETURNING MANAGERS: Jim McGuinness and Jack O'Connor will face on in the first All-Ireland SFC with returning managers.
EâVE never had this before, in either code. Marry the return of the Mac that is McGuinnessâs with Jack being back yet again for the last game of the year and youâve the first-ever All-Ireland final where both managers are returning managers.
It is a remarkable achievement by both men. To appreciate and even possess the wisdom of Heraclitus when before them so many other greats have approached a familiar river bank, taken the plunge, but learned the hard way that no man ever really steps into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and heâs not the same man. The river, like the game, has changed, and to navigate those turbulent waters and reach the other side youâve to change and have changed with them, otherwise youâll be left floundering, swept away, never quite the same, a yesterdayâs man.
In his first coming, Babs Keating was more than just a Moses who led his people to the promised land. He was a Messiah, fresh, cutting edge, a playersâ man.
When he returned to the Tipperary job in the autumn of 2005 at 61, the same age OâConnor was when he took up the Kerry gig for a third time, Keating was no longer any of those things.
Instead of getting his players all dressed up in suits on matchday, he soon declared or found them dead, only to wash them. âToo educatedâ and too uppity, including Brendan Cummins, Eoin Kelly, and Lar Corbett, all previous All-Ireland winners and future All-Stars that he dropped at some point.
âI found a huge difference between the type of players I had in the dressing room [and] what was there the previous time,â Keating would reflect over a decade later. âThe fun we had in the old days, with the old squad, no matter who you sat beside, you enjoyed it. [Second time around] I found a different bunch.â
The disconnect, even dislike, went both ways. âI genuinely donât have a clue what to put in and what to leave out about the second coming of Babs Keating,â Lar Corbett would write in his autobiography before offering a sample of bizarre episodes like when he and four others were called into the showers area minutes before an All-Ireland qualifier and told that while they had been on the named starting 15, they were now dropped.
âThe more Babs criticised us in the public, the more we became a shambles... On the only places that mattered âthe training paddock and the field of play â the drills were poor and lacked intensity. All we were doing in 2006 and 2007 was fulfilling fixtures⊠We were a broken team by the time his term ended.â
Last Sunday Keating was at the All-Ireland final, able to enjoy like every other Tipperary person the continuous fruits of the legacy of his first coming; all these decades on, his second coming is a mere footnote, virtually forgotten. But ask him to remember it and thereâs still pain there. âThe biggest mistake of my life,â he told reporters a couple of years ago. âThey were a hard two years. I donât want to relive them.â
On Leeside, the second coming of a god went considerably better. In Jimmy Barry-Murphyâs four years back over Cork there wasnât a season where he didnât either reach a league final (2012 and 2015) or an All-Ireland final (2013) or win a Munster final (2014). His genial, genuine manner meant he still retained the affection and respect of players.
But unlike Justin McCarthy, Johnny Clifford, and Canon Michael OâBrien, he failed to bring an All-Ireland back to Cork on his second time round. Like Babs, if he had it back he wouldnât have gone back.
âI regret it,â he told Denis Walsh for the Irish Times a year ago. âI had been out of the scene. The draw is there when youâre asked but⊠I was out and I should have stayed out.â
Gerald McCarthy, in hindsight, would probably feel the same about his return in the late noughties, though a horrendous winter on Leeside in part stemmed from his reluctance to step away.
Sometimes even managers that players have clamoured to return or remain on arenât quite what they thought they were getting.
Ăamon Coleman for a generation or two of Derry players was always their man, not least for his line and motto that âthe players is the menâ. After he was infamously let go by the county board within 12 months of delivering Derry their only All-Ireland, he took up in Longford but made no secret that Longford wasnât Derry. When he did get his wish to return to Derry, he found Derry wasnât quite Derry either, or rather Coleman wasnât quite Coleman.
âThe work it takes is tarra,â heâd tell his niece and god-daughter Maria McCourt when they sat down during in his final season over Derry in 2002 for a chat that would draw much of the basis of Colemanâs posthumous book. âIâm tired now and Iâll be glad to give it up. It doesnât come as easy to me now. I would be soft really and itâs harder to bollock somebody now than it was in â92 or â93. Iâm more mature, mellowed by time, and when you mellow you lose something.â
Colemanâs return was still more than respectable. In 2000 he led Derry to a league either side of a couple of one-point championship defeats to an exceptional Armagh team. In 2001 he brought them back to an All-Ireland semi-final through the newly-installed backdoor. Such achievements arenât even mentioned in the book McCourt brought out to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Derryâs All-Ireland win. The book was called The Boys of â93, about and by The Boy of â93. Not the one of 2001 or 2002.
IM McGUINNESS, upon returning to Donegal, was the same age as Coleman was going back to Derry: 51. But a 50-something man or manager doesnât seem to be as old in body or mind as a 50-something even a decade ago, especially one like McGuinness. Unlike Coleman and so many giants of the late 20th century, his vitality, energy, and drive has approximated that of his first coming.
Heâs also of a generation that was largely college educated, and conscious of the need to continuously upskill, to have a growth mindset. Though he had stepped away from the game, it hadnât passed him out. From a different, unique vantage point of coaching the most international sport of them all, he was ready to go ahead of it again. âDefinitely all those [soccer] experiences help,â he said.
âSitting with other coaches that are elite and listening to them, how they problem-solve and put game plans together.â
Every All-Ireland Donegal have won to date has been by a returning manager or one that would become one. Brian McEniff remarkably had already led Donegal to their maiden Ulster title of 1972 as a player-manager before he led the county to its maiden All-Ireland in 1992, featuring McGuinness as a rookie.
When McGuinness was in his final year, over a decade on, McEniff was back at the helm. That last of his five stints over the team was hardly a disaster but it was hardly high performance either.
The day of their 2003 first-round championship match against Fermanagh, McGuinness and his teammates got on the team bus, having no idea of the magical mystery tour they were about to embark on.
âWe stopped off in Pettigo,â Kevin Cassidy would recall.
âThere was bunting and banners up and everything. We thought there must have been a festival on. But no, it was for us. Brian stood at the front and announced, âRight boys, we have a wee function to go here.â We got off the bus and the 1992 All-Ireland song âWalking Tall in Donegalâ by Margo was playing through speakers. Women and children were asking us to sign autographs.â
Later, they got back on the bus to go to Enniskillen, where Fermanagh, by Cassidyâs admission âhammered us off the fieldâ.
Yet later that year Donegal still ended up in an All-Ireland semi-final, having beaten Galway in a quarter-final replay after McEniff went on every local radio station and rallied the county to turn Castlebar into a âpilgrimageâ.
That was McEniff and his last stint. Sometimes inspired, sometimes outdated. Hit and miss.
In McGuinnessâs first and second comings there have been no morning pitstops in Pettigo.
Mayo football has quite a record of going back to old managers â Maughan, OâMahony, Holmes, and Horan â who all won some silverware during both their first and second comings without landing the biggest prize of all.
N KERRY they also have a tendency to go back to someone who has been there before. Only itâs the same guy each time. Jack. Micko might have had a brilliant second stint with Kildare but in Kerry, since Dr Ăamonn OâSullivan finished up in the 60s, Jackâs the only one thatâs gone back.
TomĂĄs Ă SĂ© played for OâConnor in both his first and second stints and found him tactically astute each time. On reflection though, Jackâs second time around was âdifferentâ. OâConnor had released the keys to the Kingdom in the intervening years and for Ă SĂ© a principle of trust had been compromised. âWe won the All-Ireland his first year back but not afterwards. Did it make a difference? At that level, the very top, I think it does. I think it was an issue. Darragh was the same.â
Itâs hardly an issue in his third stint. No player mentioned in the book is still playing now. Theyâve moved on while he has too, keeping up to pace, combining his old-school instincts with an appreciation of the input of Cian OâNeill and his ilk with âwhat they call cognitive overloadâ and other sports science concepts.
âHeâs also very good at knowing the right thing to say, especially around the big games,â Ăamon Fitzmaurice would observe the night OâConnor delivered the 2022 All-Ireland. âAnd thereâs a bit of craic about Jack as well.â
Combine all that and itâs why he is on the verge of joining Cyril Farrell as a manager who has won two All-Irelands in any stint after his first; the two he has won since his initial stint were over two separate terms.
But further down the touchline will be someone on the verge of doing a Liam Sheedy â someone decidedly-new school who has come back and innovated and won again.
That is why they were each asked back.
And theyâre now in the first-ever all-returning managersâ All-Ireland final.
